Point of View

Most of the stories in this collection are told from the point of view of middle-aged women looking back on their past. In Friend of My Youth the story is told in first person by an unnamed narrator. The narrator relates a story that her mother once told her about a woman named Flora. There is a lot of distance between the narrator and the events she is describing, creating narrative uncertainty. The reader can never be sure if people really did feel or act the way the narrator is describing, and many things are left a mystery. This emphasizes the message of the story, that one person can never truly know another. Meneseteung is the only other story in this book told in first person. Again, the narrator is unnamed, but this time their whole identity is left a complete mystery. We do not know...